


Lioness You Are Not

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, kitten!Belle, kitten!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpelstiltskin believes Belle is far too brave for her own good, and decides to make her truly helpless in order that she learn true fear. By turning her into a kitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lioness You Are Not

**Author's Note:**

> 300-follower thank you for all my lovely followers on Tumblr.

It was getting ridiculous.   
  
Bravery was never a thing that rated highly in Rumpelstiltskin’s worldview. By his estimations, most people who called themselves ‘brave’ got themselves dead pretty soon after. Coward was not an honourable title, but since everyone who had branded him so was long dead and gone, he considered himself the winner of that little argument.   
  
Belle was brave, and he adored that about her. Well, he adored  _ her _ , however horrified he was to admit it, and her bravery was such a part of her.   
  
But there was a line between ‘brave’ and ‘bloody stupid’, and he found that serving tea to the God of Chaos, and then deciding that the man needed a _hug_ of all things, was crossing the line.   
  
Loki had looked absurdly pleased, and Belle was still standing by the end of it, but that and the point were two entirely separate things.   
  
Belle was a dragon tamer by nature, and her ability to not only work for him without complaint but to seemingly  _ enjoy his company _ was proof enough of that. She liked people who needed helping, and she liked to help: she had never yet met a monster she couldn’t befriend and teach human manners.   
  
It was going to get her killed, sooner or later.   
  
And Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t jealous of her bravery, of course not. He had long since forgotten what it was to be ashamed of self-preservation, of choosing magic and words over fists and swords.   
  
Never mind that Belle’s bravery was of a different kind, open and generous and loving.   
  
Never mind that he had never in three hundred years of sorcery truly loved anything the way she could love a stranger, out of sheer and simple bloody fear.   
  
Loki left the castle with a smile on his pale face, and Belle sighed, “Oh, I do hope he feels better soon.”   
  
“I’m quite sure he will, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin ground out, his teeth clenched, “After that little performance.”   
  
“Performance?” she spun to face him, seemingly torn between anger and confusion, “What do you mean?”   
  
“Seven _hells_ , Belle!” he said, “He’s the bloody God of Chaos: he could murder a whole city with just a thought and you were hugging him like was some kind of lost puppy!”   
  
“He’s  _ lonely _ , Rumpelstiltskin,” she replied, “And you have the same power, so don’t act like I don’t know what I’m doing!”   
  
He caught her arm, hard, as she tried to storm away. His claws bit into her skin but he didn’t care, he was so angry he could scream and smash and tear his own castle apart with his bare hands, “You’re a  _ child _ , with no concept of what you’re messing with.” He snarled into her face, but she didn’t flinch, “Your bravery is charming, dearie, but don’t mistake it for good sense.”   
  
She was staring at him, hurt behind her eyes but pure rage flashing across her face, “I do as I please, oh great  _ Dark One _ ,” she shouldn’t use those words, they were more powerful than she knew and he wanted to kill her or kiss her senseless, he cared little which, “Loki needed a hug, I have arms. He wouldn’t hurt me.”   
  
“He kills everything he touches, Belle.” Rumpelstiltskin stared at her, all the power in his body behind his eyes, and yet all she did was raise her chin and meet his gaze, “And you couldn’t muster an ounce of fear for your safety when you decided to wrap yourself around him?”   
  
“There are more dangerous things in this world than men with self esteem issues,” she muttered, “You of all people know that. If he’d hurt me, at least I’d have been hurt doing something good.”   
  
“The hurt is the main thing, Belle!” He shook her free, ran a hand over his face, “I can’t keep watching you walk into dragons’ mouths and expect to not get eaten. One day, you’ll find a monster you can’t tame.”   
  
“And why should it matter to you?” she asked, “You dragged me here, and what’s this place if not a dragon’s mouth?”   
  
“You’re too damn brave for your own good.”   
  
“And you’re too much of a sick, over-anxious coward to function properly.”   
  
“Oh, am I?” He stared at her, and made his decision, “You cannot be trusted to keep yourself safe, so I’m going to make it easier on both of us.”   
  
He grabbed both of her arms, and she stared down in dismay, “What? How?” she cried, trying to struggle free but unable to break his vice-like grip.   
  
He flicked out his fingers, and caught her as she fell.   
  
All twelve ounces of her.   
  
Belle rested in his palm, a few inches long and brown as her human hair, with wide blue eyes that were glaring at him hard.   
  
She scratched his thumb; his thick skin meant it barely registered.   
  
“Now, now, dearie, isn’t that better?” he chortled, “Much safer this way. When you learn to be afraid when fear is more than due, then you can be trusted to have arms and legs again. Until then, I have to say, you are rather sweet all small and harmless and fluffy.”   
  
She just glared at him harder.

\---   
  
It was rather useful, Rumpelstiltskin decided, having Belle all small and portable. She could fit in the pocket of his dragonhide coat easy as anything, and had made herself quite a little nest in there. She had her necklace - the one she always wore, a golden chain with a pearl on the end that he assumed was some kind of token from home - and a soft little cloth from her bedroom, and some strip of silk he didn’t recognise. She made a little cocoon in his coat pocket, as he readied himself for a trip.   
  
He hoped she’d have the good sense to jump out of there when she felt herself turning back into her usual human shape. He didn’t imagine his pocket was quite big enough for a fully grown human woman.   
  
She hissed at him, bit at his fingers, when he tried to play with her.   
  
She might have been small and fluffy and feline on the outside, but she was still his Belle underneath. And she did not appreciate her new state, not one little bit.   
  
He’d feel some remorse, if it weren’t quite so funny.   
  
Or if there wasn’t a greater purpose involved. Belle seemed to believe herself indestructible, as if all she needed was a warm and friendly smile and a song in her heart and not a thing could touch her. He hoped that being so defenseless would teach her some caution, at the very least, a little respect for creatures larger and better endowed with sharp teeth than she herself.   
  
So he started taking her out on deals.   
  
Without telling her first, of course: if she chose to make her home in his coat, then it was her own fault if she woke up one morning in Agrabah. What else did she expect from sleeping in a sorcerer’s left hand pocket?   
  
That day, they met a twenty-foot sand scorpion. The people of the nearest village needed it gone, and in their desperation they had summoned Rumpelstiltskin to deal with the problem.   
  
Belle didn’t have to know that they were there to make a deal with the scorpion rather than the townsfolk.   
  
She might have accidentally come out of his pocket instead of his quill, and gotten an eyeful of thousand-faceted eyes and pincers large enough to snap a man in half.   
  
She went bushy all over, tail high and claws dug into his palm for a moment, startled and a little worried. But then she softened, stared the scorpion down, and meowed once, questioningly, peering up with wide blue eyes.   
  
The thing craned its head down, and very slowly,  _gently_ ,  as if such a thing were possible, ran the dull side of his pincer against her back. She purred - smugly, the girl managed to be  smug even sat in the palm of his hand - and arched into it, simultaneously proving him wrong and making a friend for life.   
  
The scorpion had only charged him half of what he should have for the sand-spell and his promise to shift himself further from a population centre, and Belle purred all the way home.   
  
The next time, he tried a little harder.   
  
She was awake when he was packing, prowling around and sniffing at his spells, leaving little muddy pawprints on his notes just to annoy him. Somehow, she was a greater nuisance tiny, furry, and carryable than she was as a human being, and he knew she did it on purpose.   
  
He shooed her away from a little green vial of poison, and she meowed in confusion, “Oh, no dearie, you don’t want to be going near that.”   
  
She shot him a look, and if a kitten could look sniffy, Belle was doing a marvellous job of it.   
  
She didn’t like being small, fluffy and helpless. She didn’t like his being able to just pick her up and put her someplace high or - one time - in a high-walled wooden keepsake box, to keep her out of mischief.    
  
He would catch hell for this when she became her normal self again. But the point needed making: to men like Loki, to dragons and scorpions, phoenixes and kelpies, she might as well be a kitten for how well she could defend herself. Not all creatures could be befriended as easily as she might believe, and the sooner she understood true fear, the sooner he could stop worrying that she would get herself killed.   
  
That he worried about his housekeeper at all was neither here nor there.   
  
“Okay, dearie, here we go.” he tucked her back into his coat pocket, and away they went.   
  
That trip was a disaster, too. The goddamned dragon had allowed her to ride on her back for a whole hour, while entirely avoiding Rumpelstiltskin, and trying to turn him into a barbeque more than once.   
  
She had a knack for making creatures like her. And now, it seemed, all she had to do was meow and purr and every heart from there to the Marchlands melted.   
  
It was getting ridiculous: he was starting to wonder if she had some kind of magic of her own, and he was just as deeply woven into it as every other monster in the world. She just had to look up, blue eyes wide and trusting, believe that the monster would not harm her, and she made fools of them all.   
  
He would scoff at the creatures for bending so easily, had he not done so so quickly himself.   
  
There was nothing sweeter, more intoxicating to a monster than the person who was entirely unafraid of him. That was what he blamed for how easily she had got him under her spell, and how he was coming to miss her human laugh, her smile and her voice.   
  
_Magic, nothing more_.   
  
They travelled from the dragon’s island to the top of a mountain, where he attempted to steal a phoenix feather from the creature’s tail while it slept.   
  
Not as easy as it sounded, apparently.   
  
The phoenix, admittedly, did not take too kindly to Belle. In fact, it seemed intent upon frying her fur off, and Belle hissed and scratched, eventually retreating to the darkest recesses of Rumpelstiltskin’s coat. The phoenix screeched and set his hair on fire, before flying off into the distance. But it’d shed some feathers in the nest, so they would do for most spells.   
  
And yet, still, no human Belle. He’d been certain that getting sworn at rather violently by an enraged phoenix would do the trick - she’d certainly been quick enough to hide in his coat - and still she remained small and furry.   
  
He’d been stupid enough to curse her with a bloodspell. Meaning that the spell had to run its course, provide the intended outcome, with no other way to reverse it. But if she could be frightened, as she clearly had been, and yet remain in her kitten form, then perhaps he had cast it wrong.   
  
Three hundred years of experience didn’t counteract simple human error. Dark Ones made mistakes as often as anyone else.   
  
He pulled out all the stops on their next trip. He took her to Lake Vanish, to return an emerald he’d ‘borrowed’ from a hibernating kelpie princess. He made his bow, laid it to the shore and waited. After a few seconds, the creature rose from the depths, hooves kicking and eyes gleaming. Kelpie royalty was about as fearsome as it came, and he pulled Belle from his pocket right as the princess reared, let out a long and bloodcurdling howl. They were the reason Rumpelstiltskin hated all large bodies of water: one never knew what lurked beneath.   
  
Belle flinched, shook, her fur going bushy and claws digging into his palms, and he waited for the moment when she’d start to glow, when he would drop her and she would rise up, stand as a human woman once more   
  
He hoped for it, wished for it, but it never came.   
  
He walked home from that meeting on foot, dejected and suddenly feeling more alone than he had in centuries. If an enraged and screaming kelpie royal couldn’t scare his Belle into true fear, then he had managed to permanently curse himself out of a housemaid and into a house cat .   
  
There would be no more conversations over tea; no more fresh flowers from the garden in the vase in his study, or gently wafting cooking scents from the kitchen. No more teasing, sweetly understanding looks, nor sneaking glances down her dress when he knew she wasn’t looking. No more smiles, no more laughter.   
  
He walked in silence, brooding, the small, soft weight in his pocket little solace.   
  
She could stare at him all she liked with those wide, sweetly inquisitive blue eyes: she was still a speechless, silly little kitten, and he had managed to all but kill his closest friend out of fear, spite, out of _ jealousy _ that she could be brave where he could not.   
  
There was a creak of branches, a snap of twigs.   
  
A rustling in the bushes and a chattering, rushing, sound like wind or breath.   
  
He ignored them: it was night; it was the wind.   
  
And then there she was, stood before him in all her finery, Queen Regina in the flesh, “Well, this is convenient.”   
  
“Oh, what do you want your Majesty?” he sighed, impatience masking the little stab of anxiety she always caused in him. He was the most powerful and wicked creature for seven realms, but no one did single-minded hate, blinding and sickening  evil , quite like her.   
  
“A chat, Rumpel,” she cooed, “It’s been far too long.”   
  
“In a dark forest, at  _ night _ ?” he snarled, “I have a home, Regina, visiting hours.”   
  
“Well, what fun would that be?” she stalked closer, leaned in, all blood-red lips and noxious, apple-scented perfume.   
  
“What do you want? I’m rather tired, I’d like to get home soon.”   
  
The smile fell from her face at his tone, turned hard and cold, all business, “Fine. Snow White hides somewhere in these woods, but she has somehow gained access to dislocation spells. I couldn’t find her, knew you were here, and came to ask if you would try instead.”   
  
“And in return?” he asked, smiling with false civility, “What will you do for me?”   
  
“I will return this to you,” a little burst of bluish-purple magic surrounded her hand, and the soft little weight in his pocket vanished.   
  
Belle took one look at Regina’s poisoned-apple smile, and bit down hard on her thumb.   
  
“Ow!” she cried, shocked more than angry, and created out of thin air a little silver cage around Belle. She looked so miserable for a moment, ears back, all curled on herself, that Rumpelstiltskin wanted to break every bone in Regina’s body. Regina straightened, smiled, cupped the little cage in her hands and gave Rumpelstiltskin a look of pure malice, of joy at his obvious pain, “There, much better.” she smirked, “Such a  _ sweet _ little pet you have, Rumpel. So unlike you.”   
  
“She’s sharper than she looks.” he ground out, “But Snow White is still your problem, not mine. You are her stepmother, after all. Shouldn’t you be taking better care of your little girl?” He mocked, knowing Regina’s weak points and exploiting them mercilessly.   
  
Belle whimpered, a little blast of magic from Regina’s fingertip catching her tail, and he could see the pain reflected in her eyes. She trembled, stared at him pleadingly, but didn’t move toward him. She turned to glare at her attacker instead, hissed as menacingly as her little kitten self could.   
  
“Fiesty one, isn’t she?”   
  
“Give her back and go away, Regina,” he sighed, affecting boredom, his eyes never leaving Belle’s.   
  
“Hm,” Regina considered, brought the cage to her face and cooed, “I  _ like _ you, little one. You’ll be a nice addition to my mantelpiece.”    
  
Belle reached a claw between the bars and left three long, deep scratch marks on Regina’s face, along her cheekbone. A little trickle of blood ran from the lowest, marking her pale skin with deep red.   
  
Her hand flew to her cheek, and the cage dropped. Rumpelstiltskin had it melted away in an instant, and Belle ran for cover in the bushes, watched with wide eyes from the darkness. Rumpelstiltskin rather suspected that she was simply biding her time, waiting to attack again. If she wasn’t scared now, he knew, she never would be. Her bravery would prevent her from ever being human again, and his heart ached at the thought.   
  
He and Regina met in the middle of the clearing, face to face, threatening and snarling, the air thick with unexpressed magic, “Try that again, dearie,” he growled, “And beware the consequences.”   
  
“Such hostility,” she murmured, “Over such a  _ worthless _ little creature?”   
  
“So says the woman who’s still angry at a grown woman over a child’s error of judgement,” he smirked, “Not really one to judge priorities, are you dear?”   
  
She struck first, a burst of power that blasted him across the forest floor, leaving him crashed against a boulder. He stood, straightened, and stared at her with a challenging smile, his head throbbing and  _ furious _ .   
  
He flicked his wrist, and vines ripped through the air, whipped at her face and tangled around her arms, strung her up high in the forest canopy, “Magic yourself home, dearie!” he called in advice, “Or you can stay there forever. The world’d be a sweeter place for it!”   
  
She glared at him, and with one more burst of power she vanished.   
  
And then the boulder landed: she’d levitated it, apparently, when he was taunting her, and it crashed over his head.   
  
He collapsed, boneless, to the floor, clutching his head through roaring, blinding pain. His fingers came away red and sticky, and he sighed, the world spinning and faint. And then black, calm and cool and black, no more pain in the blackness...   
  
“Rumpelstiltskin?” a familiar voice called, and he knew he must be dreaming. Belle couldn’t speak, Belle was a tiny kitten, mewling in defiance from the bushes. Belle was speechless, literally, and yet there was her voice. “Rumpelstiltskin!” louder now, and worried, angry, “Are you alright?”   
  
“Unugffugug...” was all he managed, as he felt his head lifted, cradled in her lap.   
  
“Oh, Gods, no, no, no...” she was bent over him, her tears landing on his face, “Come on, remember me, come on, just  say something...” she murmured, pleading, begging.   
  
“Belle?” he sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles, but it was a word, a real one, so it was a start.   
  
“Yes,” she sobbed, exuding relief from every pore, “Yes, it’s me, oh, thank God, you’re awake!” she leaned down, kissed his forehead, his cheeks, cradling his head and rocking.   
  
“Belle... but you, you’re a... furry with whiskers!”   
  
She laughed, an odd little tearchoked giggle, “Yes, but now I’m not. It’s all okay... I’m not even going to murder you over the tail, however much you deserve it!”   
  
“True fear...” he murmured, and his eyes were open wide enough to see her nod.   
  
“I thought she’d  _ killed _ you!” she cried, “There was this thud, and you were on the ground and bleeding, and I could hear her laughing, and all this blood and-”   
  
“Takes more than a bloody boulder...” he grumbled, and sent a belated stream of magic to the back of his head, repaired the damage, his head clearing up quite nicely now that he was lucid enough to help him along. He didn’t sit: it was much nicer to rest there in Belle’s soft, warm lap, her skirts still scented with lavender for all her time in fur. “Didn’t know you cared.”   
  
“You’re a stupid, foolish, stubborn old man.” she chided, and took away all the sting of her words by craning her head down, lifting his head with her hands and kissing him full on the mouth.   
  
It was the most wonderful moment in all his life, with her soft lips pressed against his, and his head sent reeling once again, and the taste of her - cinammon and raspberries, spicy and sweet all at once - left on the tip of his tongue long after she had pulled back, and smiled with those wide, blue, dragon-taming eyes.   
  
She was never his pet, but he would always be hers.


End file.
